"It was the best of times..."

[GreenWyvern]

Some SF first paragraphs by different authors.

Norstrilia - Cordwainer Smith:

The story is simple. There was a boy who bought the planet Earth. We know that, to our cost. It only happened once, and we have taken pains that it will never happen again. He came to Earth, got what he wanted, and got away alive, in a series of very remarkable adventures. That’s the story.

Downbelow Station - C.J. Cherryh:

The convoy winked in, the carrier Norway first, and then the ten freighters — more, as Norway loosed her four riders and the protective formation spread itself wide in its approach to Pell’s Star. Here was refuge, one secure place the war had never yet reached, but it was the lapping of the tide. The worlds of the far Beyond were winning, and certainties were changing, on both sides of the line.

The Man who Folded Himself - David Gerrold:

In the box was a belt. And a manuscript.

[Little_Nemo]

“In five years, the penis will be obsolete,” said the salesman.

• Steel Beach by John Varley

It definitely draws you into reading the next line.

[mbh]

Sing, Goddess, sing the rage of Achilles, son of Peleus—
that murderous anger which condemned Achaeans
to countless agonies and threw many warrior souls
deep into Hades, leaving their dead bodies
carrion food for dogs and birds—
all in fulfilment of the will of Zeus.

The Iliad

[Yllaria]

@chrisk

I rather like:

“The building was on fire, and it wasn’t my fault.”

(Blood Rites, in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series)

That’s my favorite, too. And it just keeps building for the whole first page.

[Shodan]

@ThelmaLou

I love that you know that by heart, and I adore the Hornblower series.

I could probably recite half the novel, verbatim.

I was thinking about that novel in the car on the way to work this morning. Because it improves even from the first paragraph.

Hornblower is fighting the Natividad, and Lady Barbara (who later marries Hornblower) is traveling with him to get away from an outbreak of yellow fever. Hornblower shuts her up in the cable tier, to keep her away from cannonshots. There is a break in the battle due to bad weather, and Lady Barbara comes up on deck.

@Again

“This deck is no place for you”, Hornblower snapped.

“I can see this without having it pointed out to me”, she replied, and then, softening her tone, “I was going to shut myself up in my cabin.”

“Your cabin?” Five broadsides from the Natividad had torn their way thru that cabin. The idea of Lady Barbara shutting herself up there struck Hornblower as intensely funny. He laughed, and then laughed again, before checking himself in hurried mistrust as an abyss of hysteria opened up before him. He controlled himself with an effort.

“There is no cabin left for you to return to. I regret to say that the only course of action before you is to return whence you have come.”

Then there is a passage describing what it is like in the cable tier, where Lady Barbara is hungry and thirsty and her slave is screaming beside her, and rats run over her legs. She isn’t even sure if the battle is lost, or won, or merely suspended.

The thought of going back there appalled her. But then she saw the captain’s face, white with fatigue and strain under its tan. The captain’s coat was torn across the breast, and his white trousers were stained - with blood, she suddenly realized. And she noted that laugh, with its hysterical pitch, abruptly cut off, and the grim effort that had been made to speak to her reasonably.

She knew pity for him then. And she knew that to speak to him of rats and stinks and baseless fears was ridiculous.

“Very good, Captain”, she said. She turned to go. Hebe at her side set up a howl, and was shaken into silence as she went.

It is some of the same thing as the opening paragraph - change in POV. What Lady Barbara is experiencing, then what the captain is experiencing, then what Lady Barbara sees about him. And she understands. And so does the reader.

Hornblower is afraid. Horribly afraid, of losing, of being mutilated or killed, of being disgraced as a loser despite knowing that the odds are against him. But he has to maintain control, and not let anyone else know of his inner turmoil. But Lady Barbara knows. And she still respects him. And after the battle, she joins him in dealing with their situation, and then they fall in love. Because she knows.

Regards,
Shodan

[Dropo]

I am also going to cheat with a paragraph:

I am twenty-six inches tall, shapely, and well-proportioned, my head perhaps a trifle too large. My hair is not black like the others’, but reddish, very stiff and thick, drawn back from the temples and the broad but not especially lofty brow. My face is beardless, but otherwise just like that of other men. My eyebrows meet. My bodily strength is considerable, particularly if I am annoyed. When the wrestling match was arranged between Jehosophat and myself I forced him on his back after twenty minutes and strangled him. Since then I have been the only dwarf at this court.

Par Lagerkvist, The Dwarf

[Sir_T-Cups]

Can’t believe I’m the first to say this:

“I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

That, and, “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed” are the only two opening lines I remember.

[RivkahChaya]

       Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

That’s not the whole line to the first period, but it’s pretty long, so I’ll stop there. I’m Jewish and don’t even believe in the “droghte of March,” and it still gives me chills.

[ThelmaLou]

@Shodan

…
Hornblower is afraid. Horribly afraid, of losing, of being mutilated or killed, of being disgraced as a loser despite knowing that the odds are against him. But he has to maintain control, and not let anyone else know of his inner turmoil. But Lady Barbara knows. And she still respects him. And after the battle, she joins him in dealing with their situation, and then they fall in love. Because she knows.

…

This is the best thing about Hornblower as a character. He is brilliant but vulnerable and full of self-doubt (that he hides). A very attractive combination.

I hope you saw the Hornblowermade-for-TV series that came out in 1999. It was wonderful. Ioan Gruffudd was perfect as he matured from Midshipman to Commander. His relationships with his mentor Sir Edward Pellew and his good friend Bush are handled beautifully. I can’t hear the exquisite themewithout getting goosebumps on my goosebumps. I own the boxed set. Might have to get that out and watch them all again.

[/hijack]

[Scoobysnax]

It is crude but the first lines of “The Martian” certainly caught my attention.

I’m pretty much fucked.

[The_Stainless_Steel_Rat]

From a short story, but it has stuck with me for a very long time:

“A swordsman battled a sorcerer once not long before the end.”

[terentii]

@AHunter3

Robert McCammon’s Gone South:

It was Hell’s season, and the air smelled of burning children.

This is the one I was going to post. One of my all-time favorite books.

[Dewey_Finn]

A long time ago, I was standing in Waldenbooks and picked up a paperback book. I started reading it and giggled at one of the first lines, which joked about how humans were so backwards that we thought digital watches were a neat idea. Of course I bought the book and fell in love with the writing of Douglas Adams.

[Marvin_the_Martian]

My favorites have already been mentioned, but if poetry is included:

“April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land.”

Also, inspired by the Dr. Seuss thread:

“The news just came in from the County of Keck
that a very small bug by the name of Van Vleck
is yawning so wide you can look down his neck.”

[Marvin_the_Martian]

@Dewey_Finn

A long time ago, I was standing in Waldenbooks and picked up a paperback book. I started reading it and giggled at one of the first lines, which joked about how humans were so backwards that we thought digital watches were a neat idea. Of course I bought the book and fell in love with the writing of Douglas Adams.

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”

[Dewey_Finn]

That’s the opening that hooked me.

[msmith537]

"The man in Black fled across the Desert, and the Gunslinger followed.”
-The Gunslinger, by Stephen King

[Chronos]

The Stainless Steel Rat, that’s from one of Niven’s stories about the Warlock, right? “What Good is a Glass Dagger”, I think?

[Dendarii_Dame]

“Miss Vesper Holly is the only Philadelphian of my acquaintance to own a volcano.” Lloyd Alexander’s The El Dorado Adventure.

That’s from a book. My favorite short story opener is: “Death did nothing to improve Will Lugg.” Patricia L. Bridgman’s “Ghoulies and Ghosties.”

[Disheavel]

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

For all of the forthcoming magic and the many books, I think the focus on and getting to know other characters is one of the charms of Rowling’s books. I think it will continue to be as much or even more part of culture than the the thread starter.